site banner
NunoSempere  1yr ago (nunosempere.com)   1275 thread views

Skepticism braindump on existential risk from artificial intelligence.

nunosempere.com

The linked post seeks to outline why I feel uneasy about high existential risk estimates from AGI (e.g., 80% doom by 2070). When I try to verbalize this, I view considerations like

  • selection effects at the level of which arguments are discovered and distributed

  • community epistemic problems, and

  • increased uncertainty due to chains of reasoning with imperfect concepts

as real and important.

I'd be curious to get perspectives form the people of the Motte, e.g., telling me that I'm the crazy one & so on.

Regards,

Nuño.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

low effort comment:

a lot of that is sort of true, and yud and miri and ai xrisk are wrong about a bunch of things imo, but none of that makes 'ai / technology is going to irreversably transform human life and the general direction of agency / action on this planet' any less true ... and even if that doesn't involve everyone dying ("x-risk") that still seems very significant. this is true because vaguely evolution and capability, ai is powerful, people want to develop and use it, and it'll get more capable and powerful, same way humans did. So "therefore, AI is less important" is not a good takeaway.

I don't necessarily disagree. In particular, I think that from the considerations I mention, we can conclude that the specifics of how the x-risk would develop are still up in the air, and that his is somewhat valuable info.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats